the eviivo breakfast award

Introduction by Ian Hardwick, Business Development Director, eviivo

Wherever you stay on holiday, it’s great to wake up to an extraordinary breakfast, a bright spark in your morning, one that becomes part of the fantastic holiday story you rave to your friends about when you get home. Just imagine a smartly cooked breakfast, lashings of toast and enough coffee or tea to set you right until lunch. For us at eviivo that is a key part of the best B&B hospitality. Once you’ve made your online booking you want to check-in easily and have an amazing stay, with a brilliant breakfast at the top of everyone’s holiday wish list.

So as a sponsor of The World Marmalade Awards B&B and Restaurant category, we at eviivo thought we’d celebrate great B&B owners across Europe who work hard to make sure the booking process is hassle-free and delivers you the best accommodation out there…including a bonanza breakfast. Our idea for theeviivo breakfast marmalade award was to find a marmalade that was so balanced but bold in flavour that it could be served with a cooked breakfast: whether that’s a full British feast, an elegant Continental-style selection, or something modern and inspired by freshness and zing.

So together with the judges at The World Marmalade Award we tasted a huge number of jars looking to find the best B&B marmalade…

The winner of the 2017 eviivo best b&b breakfast marmalade award is..

The judges thought that their “Dark & Stormy” thick-cut marmalade, with its orange, ginger, lime + hint of rum, was “a wonderful marriage of flavours, a brilliant ‘seafarers’ marmalade” says awards founder Jane Hasell-McCosh, and suited the stronger flavours in a traditional cooked breakfast well, as the tart Seville and lime flavours hold their ground alongside sausages, bacon, eggs and even kippers.

We congratulate them and hope you’ll get down to Dartmouth and enjoy their hospitality. And to everyone who entered, there’s a year of practice, new ideas and inspiration ahead. Looking forward to seeing what you create next year for the best B&B breakfasts.

The winner’s story: Kate Ryder at Café Alf Resco

The name isn’t just a pun, the letters ALF stand for the “Amalgamated League of Friends” and reflect that we’re all about our community and that’s our story. I’m passionate about Dartmouth, where I live, and making marmalade. We offer free toast two days a week during march so all the locals can come in and try the marmalade I have made – we have nine different varieties this year – and during march the café is all dressed up in an orange theme.

People love the B&B because we say, “as long as you can get up by 2pm you can still have breakfast”, which for my generation is such an attraction, and this works because the café is such a strong part of our story, our business and the local community. We’re open for breakfast from 7am every morning until 2pm every afternoon, 7 days a week. Breakfast is our passion, and marmalade for me is something wonderful and tangy to have with your breakfast. And despite what you read in the news it appeals to people like me who love small batch artisan products. Also I’m younger than the over-60 generation who are supposed to be the marmalade lovers.

For the whole of March we’re making marmalade-themed items, we did some canapés last night with marmalade and cream cheese. We make the Nigella Lawson Chocolate and Marmalade Cake, which is a delicious all-in-one recipe. We serve locally produced sausages made in Newton Abbot, so I’ll be coming up with some ideas to serve marmalade with those.

If you own a B&B you should definitely have a go at making marmalade. I get everyone involved as early January can be quiet’ish, so the café crew help with chopping the oranges. You need to be offering things that you can only get in your B&B, things you can’t just buy off the shelf, is what it’s all about. We try and make everything that we offer for breakfast, and that way you can only get it at Café Alf Resco in Dartmouth, Devon.

Marmalade Awards News

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